2019 in Review!

We had quite the exciting year!

We kicked off with our annual Winter Cup, hosted at Columbia University's Rocco B. Commisso Soccer Stadium, where 14 corporate soccer teams competed across two divisions and witnessed our PS 98 poet-athletes (the Poetry SLAM 2018 Champions!) do what they do best.

February brought our second annual Poet's Banquet, an opportunity for our poet-athletes to meet and perform with their Boston SCORES counterparts. We hosted Winter SCORES Day later that month with the support of the Embassy of Qatar. What made this day even more special was that it was our first time ever hosting an event in the Bronx.

Throughout a busy Spring, we continued to run our weekly soccer games with the help of countless dedicated volunteers. Meanwhile, we prepared for April's National Poetry Month, where we hosted Pancakes and Poetry at Home Sweet Harlem and launched our second poetry book Together, We Are. 

In June, we were back at Columbia's Baker Athletic Complex for our Jamboree, bringing together almost 1,000 poet-athletes, families, coaches, and community members to celebrate another successful school year which proved yet again that our commitment to soccer, self-expression, and service can have lasting, meaningful impact. This is the only day of the year where the entire America SCORES New York community comes together as one and it will always be one of my favorite days of our year. 

There is no better way than Jamboree to kick off #summerSCORES and one of our national partners made the summer even more special by donating their World Cup ads for our first ever national commercial! It was the ideal way to prepare for our third annual Kicking it Forward Alumni Tournament (@kickingitforwardny) which closed out June, proving yet again that the initiative and energy of our high school students knows no bounds. They will be our future leaders. We had the honor of welcoming in our first ever event presenting sponsors for SCORES Cup which was hosted in association with the Embassy of Qatar, featuring over 500 players from almost 40 companies! Our poet-athletes stayed occupied, participating in summer programming in sites across Manhattan and Brooklyn and, thanks to Volkswagen, even getting the chance to see and participate in the World Cup winning US Women's National Team's ticker tape parade along the Parade of Heroes! 

All this excitement helped tide us over until our #fallSCORES season, during which we served over 1,000 poet-athletes, played over 200 soccer games, wrote 1,500 poems, hosted Fall Frenzy at Riverbank State Park, and launched our 2030 Vision Strategy. We grew together throughout the season and made some new friends along the way (including Megan Rapinoe)!

Commitment to our poet-athletes and to our mission remained steadfast from the Embassy of Qatar, the Harris Family Charitable Foundation, GFP Real Estate, the New York Community Trust Heisman Trophy Fund, NY District Attorney’s Office, and the West Harlem Development Corporation, who support our poet-athletes and continuously provide them with the opportunity to play, write, and serve for themselves and their communities. For them, and all of our amazing partners, we could not be more grateful.

With them, our supporters, and our poet-athletes, we are eager to continue growing and serving in 2020!